Dwight Howard Would Listen to Offers from the Boston Celtics

The traveling Dwight Howard circus made its latest pit stop in Boston, with Howard telling the media that should the Celtics contact him this summer (assuming he hasn’t been dealt away by then), he’d be all ears. From the Boston Herald: “And even though we don’t believe this is a team of his dreams, we do know that the Celts will have a great deal of money to throw at a free agent or two in the next offseason. And if Howard is still available — if the Magic don’t blink and move him before the March deadline — C’s president Danny Ainge will undoubtedly put in a call to Team Dwight. The question is whether he’ll answer. ‘Always. Always,’ Howard said. ‘I’d always listen to a team like that. My thing is I want to win. It’s not something like I’m doing this for money. I win. I want to do it my way.’ There may be two problems for the Celtics in that last paragraph. Howard may question whether the club can win with him, Rajon Rondo, Paul Pierce, a collection of minimum salary veterans and a few children. And his ‘way’ likely means a bigger stage. On the subject of what he’s looking for, Howard hit on some reasonable themes while seemingly throwing a chill at the Magic by comparison. ‘The first thing is basketball,’ he said. ‘I want to win a championship, and it takes a certain type of team to win a championship. You know, there’s a lot of teams who are great during the regular season. They play well, but it’s different once you play in those playoffs, you know? It’s gut-check time. Like I told the Magic, I just want to win. I don’t want a team that doesn’t know how you have to win in the playoffs. I want a team that’s going to go out every night and forget about stats, forget about who scores the most points or who is the fan favorite. Just go out and play, play for each other and play to win. That’s the only thing … ‘You know,’ said Howard, ‘you look at a team like Boston and look at a team like LA who’s won . . . especially Boston. Man, those guys came together and they didn’t care who scored all the points. They had done all the individual stuff. You know, for me, I’ve done a lot of things individually, but I want a championship. All those accolades that I’ve got over the years, they mean a lot, but it’s just different watching teams hold up that trophy and knowing how hard you have to work to get it … They have the championship mentality,’ he said of the Celts. ‘It means a lot. Like I said, I like the team. They play hard and they go after it, and that’s what I like.’”